In Defense of Walking Weapons
by LaylaBinx
Summary: [Part 1 of the Reconstruction Series] "You know why Steve did what he did. You know why he left. You can't honestly sit here and tell me that you wouldn't have done the exact same thing if Rhodey had been in that position." Spoilers for the end of the movie.
**Ughhh...damned if this movie isn't doing its dead level best to mentally and emotionally destroy me -_-* My friends kept asking if I was Team Cap or Team Iron Man and I was pretty much "Team FFS My Idiot Children Need To Stop Fighting". I'm also Team Protect Bucky Barnes At All Costs. This movie left me with an uncomfortable level of emotions that I'm left to deal with through fan fic so prepare for the feels train because it's about to crash into the station.**

 **Long ass A/N: Okay, allow me to say a few words about the following story. Please do not think I'm Tony-bashing here; I assure you I'm not. I completely understand Tony's anger and betrayal at the end of the movie (I know I would feel the same way) and I'm not trying to say he shouldn't have felt that way. But I'm also completely and utterly against the idea of Bucky being a villain; I'm with Steve in that I firmly believe Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier are two entirely different people. To be honest this story was mainly written in a response to an interview with the writers of the movie. Basically when asked why the chose to put Bucky back on ice at the end of the movie they said they still viewed him as guilty and that he should be punished for his crimes by going back into cryo. Seriously, this was their answer. There was never a thought to him getting help or therapy or anything that could help him (even though we saw all the fancy Stark brain tech at the beginning of the movie), they just thought he should be punished for everything he did while under Hydra's control. It's pretty upsetting to be perfectly honest.**

 **So once again, please do not think I'm Tony-bashing; that absolutely was not my intention. He's a stubborn asshole sometimes but I love Tony and my heart hurt for him at the end of the movie. Natasha just seemed like the best person to talk to him about something like this because she had similar experiences and would know what she was talking about. Anyway, rant over.**

 **Disclaimer: I own nothing =/**

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"I see you're still breaking into places you're not wanted," Tony remarks sharply over one shoulder. "Nice to see those spy skills of yours are still going to good use."

Natasha flashes a wry smile in response. "I see you're still arrogant enough to have not changed the locks or the passcodes to the compound. Nice to see some things haven't changed."

Tony curses quietly; she has a point. He'd been meaning to change the passcodes for about a week now but he just...can't bring himself to do it yet. He doesn't know what's holding him back but he just can't shake the finality of it.

"What do you want, Natasha?" he asks shortly, keeping his back to her while he continues to work on the enhancements for Rhodey's leg braces. It's going to months for him to heal but these braces should cut down on the time if his calculations are correct. He's clearly busy, he has other things to worry about right now; Natasha better keep this meeting short.

"Did you stop by to say 'I told you so'? To tell me that I was wrong and you and everyone else were right?" he asks, the questions coming out short and clipped because Goddamn if the past couple days hadn't been one long headache after another. "If that's the case, then spare me."

He hears her cross the room quietly, taking long, nearly silent strides across the glossy tile floor. "None of the above," she answers as she gets closer. "I just came to talk and to see how you were doing."

Tony scoffs at the statement. It sounded honest enough but this was still Natasha he was talking to. She could lie with the best of them and make you believe every single word. "Me? Oh, I'm fine. I'm just fucking dandy," he tells her acidly. "Life is nothing but rainbows and unicorns right now. Oh, you know, except for the whole Avengers break up thing. And the vigilante status all of us have been branded with. And finding out that I was working side-by-side with my parents' murderer for the past few days. Aside from all that, everything's just peachy."

Natasha comes to a stop beside him, silent and impassive. Tony spares her a brief glance before turning back to his work. Her hair is cut short and dyed a soft ash blonde, a dramatic change from her usual vibrant red. She's dressed down in jeans and simple grey t-shirt with a black cotton jacket hanging loosely over the top. There's a beige messenger bag hanging from one shoulder and tucked across her body. Every bit of it screams going off radar and it makes Tony frown.

"You planning to disappear again?" he asks with overhyped disinterest. He shouldn't care what she's planning to do but, just like he can't force himself to change the passcodes just yet, he can't ignore it completely. They did have a history together, tumultuous though it may have been.

"Thinking about it," Natasha answers honestly, peering over his shoulder as he works. "Is all that for Rhodey?"

Tony nods once. "He got off lucky," he says without looking at her. "He'll be a physical therapist's bitch for the next couple of months but he should be able to walk normally for the most part by the end of it." He snatches a pen from the table and jots a few notes in the margins of the design in front of him.

"But let's be honest here, you didn't come to play camp counselor and talk about our feelings or discuss leg braces and medical records. You came here with an agenda." He turns to face her then, eyes leveled with hers. "There's always an agenda."

Natasha gives him a quirked, razor blade smile. "Because you know me so well, right? Because you know every single thing about me."

Tony sighs and steps away from the table, the tension headache forming behind his eyes growing stronger. "What do you want, Natasha?" he asks again, walking into the kitchen and pulling out a bottle of very strong, obscenely expensive scotch. "You said you were here to talk, so talk. What's on that sly, crafty mind of yours?"

Natasha doesn't answer for a moment, instead choosing to walk across the room to the dining room table and setting her messenger bag on top of it. "Steve," she says simply, turning to face him again.

"Nope," Tony snaps back, casting a warning glare her way. "Don't want to talk about it. I have nothing to say about that star-spangled traitor."

"Tony-" she tries but the inventor waves her off just as quickly.

"No," he says, cutting her off sharply. "I'm done. He made his choice and there's nothing left to say. He chose a murderer over his team, over the Avengers. Oh, and the fact that he knew about Barnes' involvement and didn't tell me? That he shifted his loyalties to someone he knew was responsible for the murder of my parents? That's a real dick move."

Natasha shakes her head slightly. "He didn't know it was Barnes until Zemo dug up that security footage. I think he might have had an idea, made a connection after S.H.I.E.L.D fell-"

"He knew, Natasha!"

"He guessed, Stark!" the ex-assassin snaps back. "Zola made some pretty heavy implications about the "car crash" that killed your parents not being an accident before we were both nearly blown off the face of the earth and Rogers is smart enough to put two-and-two together. Zola didn't have to name Hydra or the Winter Soldier specifically to get the point across that the crash might have been orchestrated. All of S.H.I.E.L.D's files, including anything they had on Hydra, were made public knowledge after I dumped them all online and Steve knows how to read between the lines. It wasn't a huge leap to make."

"Well you're just ready and willing to defend everyone tonight, aren't you?" Tony asks with a disbelieving scoff. "Well, I'm sorry, Natasha, but I'm still a little pissed about everything that's happened over the past few days. Forgive me but I'm not quite ready to accept Steve's decision with open arms just yet."

"I'm not saying you have to," Natasha tells him with a quiet sigh. "I'm just saying that you shouldn't take it as a personal attack; I highly doubt Steve did any of this to hurt you. If he did know about your parents I don't think he was keeping that information from you for personal reasons."

"Personal reasons like what?" Tony asks incredulously. "Like how his long lost BFF was the one who put them both in the grave? You really think he would fess up to that without provocation?"

"How about not knowing how to start a conversation like that when he wasn't 100% positive in the first place?" Natasha retorts, cocking her head to the side slightly. "I gave him the file on Barnes myself and he's spent the better part of the past two years trying to track him down. Steve feels responsible for what happened to Barnes so he's making it his priority to get him back and get him help."

"Ah Jesus, I should have known you had a hand in it," Tony snaps irritably, shaking his head. "You know what? I don't even care, it doesn't matter. He betrayed us, Nat. He hung us out to dry. He dropped everything and ran off into the sunset with his Hydra assassin while the rest of us are either left to clean up this mess or stuck in government holding cells. Tell me if I'm missing something here."

"Well, to be fair, you were the one who got everyone get thrown in prison in the first place so…" Natasha deadpans easily, undeterred by the outburst.

Tony growls low in his throat and shakes his head. "This is exactly the kind of thing I was trying to prevent! I was trying to do the right thing for us and everyone else. The fact that Rogers decided to piss it all away for his old army buddy makes it pretty clear where his priorities lie."

"God, would you knock off the martyr act for one Goddamn second, Stark?" Natasha snaps, her careful patience coming to a halt for the moment. "You know why Steve did what he did. You know why he left. You can't honestly sit here and tell me that you wouldn't have done the exact same thing if Rhodey had been in that position."

"Rhodey isn't a mindless killer," Tony growls in response.

Natasha crosses her arms in front of her chest. "Neither is Barnes."

"Oh really? Because watching him murder my parents in cold blood left a pretty clear image of him being a mindless killer in my head," Tony snarls, defensive and angry because those wounds are still fresh. Those images, grainy and distorted though they were, are still emblazoned in his mind like neon signs. He can still see the crash, hear his mother's cracked and broken voice as she calls out for his father. He can still see the flash of the metal arm, hear the crunch of bone, see the cold, dead expression on the Winter Soldier's face. It makes him want to throw up.

"The Winter Soldier and James Barnes are two entirely different people, Tony," Natasha says, her voice level and calm once again.

"Fucking hell, you sound just like Rogers," the former Avenger scoffs bitterly, pouring a glass of scotch and knocking it back all in one gulp. "Are you forgetting that just a few carefully placed code words turned your precious Barnes into ruthless assassin in a matter of seconds?"

"Are you forgetting that he's been tortured, beaten, mutilated, and brainwashed since 1945?" the ex-assassin quips easily. "It's kind of difficult to shut off seventy years of brainwashing in one night."

"And what's that supposed to prove, huh?" Tony shoots back with a razor sharp glare, pouring another liberal splash of scotch in his glass. "I'm just supposed to forgive him because of that? I'm supposed to sweep it all under the rug? Ignore it and act like it never happened? Sorry, Nat, but it's gonna take something a lot stronger than this," he says, gesturing broadly with his glass and the accompanying bottle. "To get rid of all that."

Natasha says nothing, her expression unreadable. She just watches him silently from across the room. Tony continues on undaunted. "You want me to accept his crimes with just a shrug and say, 'oh it's okay, he didn't know what he was doing. He's a victim, too.'? No, bullshit. That ain't happening. I don't care if he literally had puppet strings attached to his body; I watched him murder my mother with his bare hands."

He's angry now, seething, because if Natasha had seen the footage she would understand. She would agree with him. "The whole brainwashing thing doesn't fly with me, Nat. He doesn't get redemption or understanding from me, not for this. I don't care how far gone he was at the time, he's still the one who killed her. It was his hand around her throat. He's guilty, plain and simple. Regardless of whose control he was under at the time, to me Barnes is nothing more than a murderer."

For several long moments Natasha doesn't say anything. Tony watches her sharply, downing the second glass of scotch and feeling the slightest hint of satisfaction in knowing he'd made his point. Then Natasha begins walking across the room, slow, careful, and Tony knows she's about to make a point all her own. Shit.

"Have you ever been used against your will, Stark?" she asks quietly, her voice honey-sweet and peppered with arsenic. "Have you ever been manipulated, exploited, and forced to do something you absolutely did not want to do?"

She comes to a stop in front of him, her eyes narrowing just a little. "No," she breathes, her voice like a blood-speckled lullaby. "You haven't. You're lucky that way. So, so lucky."

This is no longer the Avengers/former S.H.I.E.L.D agent/chaotic good version of Natasha that's speaking; this is Red Room Natasha. This is Natalia Alianovna Romanova, assassin, sniper, femme fatale. This is the woman who has blood dripping from her ledger, who has names and lists and books filled with completed missions. This Natasha is deadlier than any member of their team and she's now standing a few inches away from him.

"I have," she tells him, her voice dropping an octave and a cold, sharp glint appearing in her eye. "I know exactly what it's like to be used as a weapon. To have your agency removed and to be at the mercy of puppet masters and code words. I know what it's like to be unmade, to be picked apart and put back together countless times until they're satisfied with the end result. And then, at the last second, they start the process all over again."

"I know what it's like to be sent on missions where the only acceptable outcome is headshots and pools of blood. I know what it's like to be a walking, breathing weapon, Stark. There is no decision, there is no choice, there's just you and your orders." Her jaw sets a little more tightly, her arms no longer crossed at her chest but hanging loosely at her sides. It somehow makes her look more dangerous.

"And you want to know the worst part?" she asks, head tilting to the side curiously. "The thing that shrieks its way into your consciousness every waking hour of the day? It's that single moment of clarity you have when you've just pulled the trigger. That thought, after the smoke clears and the brain matter is dripping down the wall, when you think 'oh dear God, what have I done?' That's the worst part because that split second is all you have, the only thing that truly belongs to you in that moment. Everything else, before, middle, and after, belongs to the one controlling you. You have one microscopic flash of clarity to hold onto and it's to realize the amount of blood that's on your hands."

She gets closer, uncomfortably close, and if Tony wasn't so convinced she wasn't about to skin him alive, he might have tried to make a joke about it. "Not all of us get to play the alabaster saint, Stark. You don't get to get to tell me about guilt. You don't get to judge and criticize and persecute when you have never known the helplessness of someone else pulling the strings."

She takes a step back then, releasing him from the box she'd trapped him in, and walks back across the room to grab the messenger bag she'd left on the table. She flips it open and plucks a thick file from one of the pockets inside. Tony watches silently as she then splits the file into three separate ones, spreading them out across the table.

When she's finished, she turns to face him again. "Thirty-six."

Tony blinks in confusion. "Sorry, is that number supposed to mean something?"

The cold, sharpness is gone from Natasha's eyes but her voice still holds a bite. "That's the number of agents who were injured or killed when Clint attacked the helicarrier while under Loki's control. The number of casualties that he was directly responsible for but had no control over."

She plucks a different file from the table, holding it lightly between her fingers. "This is a list of all the people who were killed in the Battle of New York. A battle Loki caused, right?" She shakes her head once and drops the file back on the table. "Dr. Selvig was the one who helped him open the portal which allowed the Chitauri to attack the city. Because of Loki's mind control, Selvig is directly and indirectly responsible for every name on that list."

The last file is thinner but carries no less weight. Natasha doesn't back down. "These are military and hospital reports of what happens when Banner loses control. This is what happens when our quiet, mild-mannered scientist gets angry and the Hulk takes over. It may not be mind control but it's definitely a loss of self and agency."

She drops the file back onto the table with the others and crosses her arms over her chest again. "Does it make them any less guilty because they weren't in control of their actions? No, that blood was still spilled all the same because of them. But the fact that we understand they weren't in control of their actions, that we know that they wouldn't do those things in any other situation? That's the difference. If someone shoots at you, you don't blame the weapon, you blame the person holding it."

"Yeah, yeah. All right," Tony says with a heavy, exhausted sigh. "You've made your point; I get it. But that doesn't mean I forgive him for what he did. It doesn't mean I'm just going to shrug it off and act like it never happened."

"I'm not asking you to forgive him, Tony," Natasha tells him evenly. "And I'm not saying your anger and grief are wrong; you have every right to be upset. If Hydra did order the murder of your parents, Tony, they were the ones who made that decision and sealed their fates. Which means the Winter Soldier, under their control, was used as their very own walking, breathing weapon to carry out the orders. So yes, be angry at the Winter Soldier, be furious at what happened to your parents, but understand that James Buchanan Barnes did not do it."

Tony says nothing for a moment, pouring another shot of scotch into his glass. "Fine. Distinction made. Happy?"

"Ecstatic," Natasha answers dryly.

"Good."

A tense, heavy silence falls between them for a few moments, nothing but the sound of the air conditioner filling the void. Finally, Tony sighs heavily, knocks back the last drink, and walks across room to the kitchen, dropping his glass in the sink with a soft thud. "I'm still pissed that Steve chose Barnes over us."

"I know," Natasha assents gently, tucking the files back into her messenger bag. She rearranges the clothes inside to cover them before flipping it closed again. "But I can't say I blame him. We all have that one person we would give up everything for. You know you would have done the same thing if it were Rhodey," she says, gesturing toward the leg brace designs Tony had been working on. "Or Pepper."

Tony frowns because she has a point and he hates it. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that if came down Rhodey or Pepper, he'd drop everything and walk away. Especially for Pepper. He destroyed nearly every suit he had to keep her safe and he would do it all again without so much as a flinch.

Natasha abandons the bag on the table and walks back across the room to stand beside Tony. "I know things didn't turn out the way we wanted them to," she says quietly. "I know you were trying to do the right thing, what you thought was best for everyone. You and Steve…" she sighs in quiet exasperation and shakes her head. "Both of you were doing what you thought was right; it's always a tricky slope when it comes to things like that. Our reasons are our own which means no one is completely right or wrong. It's one of life's great conundrums."

She drums her fingers on the countertop lightly, contemplating. "Maybe it's better this way, though. Maybe the world should go back to taking care of itself without the Avengers. Maybe it's time we take a note from Clint's book and retire for a while." She shrugs one shoulder. "Who knows, maybe it's for the best."

She reaches out and lays a gentle hand on Tony's shoulder. It's friendly and sincere, no trace of anger or accusation or betrayal. This is simply them going their separate ways for the time being.

"I should get going," Natasha says after a moment, stepping away and walking back across the room to grab her messenger bag again. "I have some other personal matters to attend to. And so do you," she adds cryptically as she makes her way toward the door.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tony calls out suspiciously at her retreating form. The word "cryptic" is never an adjective one would want to use with Natasha.

"Nothing at all," she says over one shoulder, flashing him a wink just before she steps outside. "Take care of yourself, Stark." And with that she's gone, disappearing into the hall and then wherever else she decided to disappear after that.

Tony is left quiet and confused in the kitchen for approximately twenty-seven seconds before Friday's voice cuts through the intercom.

"Sir, Ms. Potts is waiting downstairs for you. Should I send her up?"

His breath catches in his throat slightly. He hasn't seen Pepper in months but those months feel like years. He had unintentionally driven her away even though he did everything he could to make her stay. He thought once he destroyed his suits following the incident with the Mandarin that they'd be able to make it work. But then Ultron happened. Then Sokovia. And then. And then. Well now there were no more 'and thens' and they had a chance to start again. They had a chance to be together.

Pepper was here, she had come to see him, and he had a choice to make. Was he willing to give up everything for her like Steve had done for Barnes? Could he turn his back on Iron Man and the disassembled Avengers and everything that had led up to this moment to have Pepper back in his life? There was no question; he knows the answer all the way down to his core.

"Sir?"

"Yeah. Yeah, send her up."

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 **Yay! So it kind of ends on a hopeful note! Thanks for reading guys! :D**

 **Oh, and just in case you'd like to ruin your day, here's a link to the interview I was talking about: craveonline (dot com)/** **entertainment/985969-captain-america-civil-war-writers-b-movies-podcast#/slide/1**


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